Staff Technical Program Manager, IT

The role:

The Staff Technical Program Manager (TPM) plays a critical role in enabling program-based delivery across the IT organization. This role exists to ensure complex, cross-team initiatives move predictably from approval through design, build, and operate, while balancing risk, dependencies, and capacity across multiple teams.

As a Staff TPM, you will operate at the program level, partnering with Technology, Business  and Compliance stakeholders to drive clarity in ambiguity, surface trade-offs early, and enable informed decision-making.

You will focus on delivery readiness, sequencing, governance, and program health - not sprint execution, backlog management, or Scrum Master responsibilities. Success in this role means improving predictability, reducing late-stage surprises, and ensuring solutions are operationally supportable, secure, and audit-ready.

This role directly contributes to SoFi’s mission by strengthening how IT delivers outcomes in a regulated, high-scale environment, while preserving team autonomy and sustainable execution.

What you’ll do: 

On a day-to-day basis, you will:

• Drive work from approval → project kickoff → design → ARB → build → operate
• Ensure approved work is structured correctly in Jira, aligned to program goals and roadmaps
• Drive creation of high-level work definitions and ensure readiness for Project Kickoff
• Ensure Design Documents exist, are complete, and ready for Architecture Review Board (ARB) review
• Identify, manage, and resolve cross-team dependencies and sequencing risks
• Facilitate scrum-of-scrums-style coordination focused on dependency resolution—not status reporting
• Partner with IT Managers to ensure realistic capacity planning across projects and BAU
• Identify, frame, and escalate delivery risks and trade-offs early, providing options and recommendations to leadership
• Synthesize Jira signals into program-level health reporting, highlighting risks, trade-offs, and decisions
• Ensure operate readiness, including runbooks, monitoring, and Tier 1 support handoff
• Act as a trusted partner to Program Leads and IT leadership on delivery health and prioritization

This role is hybrid, with in-office collaboration expected 6 times per month. Occasional extended in-office hours may be required during critical delivery milestones or escalations. 

What you’ll need:

Required qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience
• 8+ years of experience in Technical Program Management, Program Management, or a closely related role
• Proven experience managing complex, cross-team programs with multiple dependencies
• Strong understanding of technical systems, integrations, and infrastructure concepts
• Experience working with design governance and architecture review processes
• Demonstrated ability to operate in ambiguous environments and drive clarity
• Experience using Jira as a system of record for delivery and reporting
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to distill complex topics for varied audiences
  

Nice to have

• PMI Program Management Professional (PgMP) certification or equivalent program-level delivery certification
• PMP or similar project management certification (valued, but secondary to program-level experience)
• Technical or cloud platform certifications (e.g., AWS, GCP, Azure)
• Experience delivering programs in regulated, audit-driven, or security-sensitive environments
• Background in platform, infrastructure, DevOps, or security-focused programs
• Experience mentoring or coaching other Technical Program Managers